


your ex-lover is dead

by singsongsung



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 13:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1780264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art (who is an idiot) had been goddamn in love with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your ex-lover is dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenofspade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/gifts).



> Canon applies to 2x08.
> 
> Please forgive the absolute absence of any legal/ethical/moral issues that might arise from Sarah's involvement with the police in the future; let's just call it creative license.

Art remembers meeting Beth for the first time, when they were both new kids on the job. He remembers, for some reason, above all else, the straight, white line of her teeth in her smile, gleaming clean behind her lips, which were covered in some shade of light, work-appropriate lipstick. Beth had a great smile, when she broke it out, bright and warm and just a little mocking, in a laughing-with-you-not-at-you kind of way. _Flash those pearly whites, Childs_ , he’d tell her whenever she was frowning at her computer screen or pouting at the empty box of donuts on the table in the break room.

 

Art loved her smile, loved all the things it could say. It had nothing to do with how much he wanted to kiss her.

 

 

 

 

 

He remembers meeting Sarah for the first time, though he didn’t know she was Sarah then. He remembers thinking that something was really up with Beth, remembers worrying that she might’ve taken more pills than she should have, worrying that cracks were appearing in her once brilliant brain, remembers being so torn between two powerful urges, wanting to smack her and wanting to give her the world’s biggest hug.

 

_It’s okay, you moron_ , he wanted to tell her, glancing over repeatedly at the passenger seat where she sat, looking like a deer in the headlights. At every intersection, he wanted to hold her hand, Beth’s fingers wrapping around his like that day with Maggie Chen, Beth’s skin soft and smelling like that moisturizer she used all winter, Beth’s fingernails biting lightly into his skin, the callus on her middle finger. But Beth had a boyfriend, Beth was not touchy-feely, and Beth, who was actually Sarah Manning, was sitting in his car looking like she’d never been so confused in her life.

 

The problem with Sarah, Sarah puking all over the table during the hearing, Sarah quiet and without any of Beth’s teasing wit sitting by her counselor’s office, Sarah looking at him in this searching way he’d never seen Beth look at him before, was that he thought she was Elizabeth Childs, his one and only partner, April Fool’s baby from East York, youngest child and only daughter in a family of boys. He thought that this girl, with all her panic and her silence and her placating, closed lip smiles, was his girl, his Beth.

 

And Art (who is an idiot) had been goddamn in love with her.

 

 

 

 

 

Months and miles after Art watches numerous identical girls’ lives go absolutely batshit crazy and Helena has eaten ever cracker he’s ever bought, he goes back to work.

 

Angie is no longer speaking to him, he’s received accolades for preventing the systematic murder of several science-born humans, and Sarah Manning strolls into the precinct with a bit of a shit-eating grin on her face, wearing a badge that says Consultant.

 

“Alright, partner?” she teases him as she sits down at the desk adjacent to his, and he has one of those vicious, painful flashes of missing Beth.

 

“Alright, workload?” Art volleys back, nodding to the pile of files besides his computer. It is strange to him that Sarah is here, strange to him that the powers-that-be decided she might be an asset in undercover operations, strange that she’s been so easily accepted into the precinct, strange that everyone is so eager to get up and personal with a real life science experiment.

 

Everything is strange, but as Art watches Sarah flip through the first file, watches her turn slightly in her chair and pull her mess of dark hair into a ponytail, the strangest thing of all is how easily she could be Beth.

 

 

 

 

 

Their first case, like a bad joke, involves a drug dealer, a failed homemade bomb, and a missing four-year-old boy. Sarah is stock still and yet buzzing with energy and Art remembers her daughter, the one person in her life she was always so desperate to protect.

 

He and Beth had a dead kid once. It was a routine call from neighbours suspicious of abuse and neglect and it ended with Beth throwing up on the front lawn, bawling her eyes out in the dead-and-dying blades of grass. Beth sat there and cried like her world had just come to an end and Art handed off the case and tried to help her or hold her or just something but Beth, being Beth, wouldn’t accept it. She came to work the next day dry-eyed and steel-jawed and it was over a year later, after Maggie Chen, Beth high on pills in the back of Art’s car like a criminal rather than a cop and in the midst of all her bullshit ramblings she’d said _maybe if I could get pregnant he’d still love me_ and Art had gripped the steering wheel with all the force in his hands, driven Beth home, deposited her into the bed she shared with the often-absent Paul, and watched her fitful dreams, hovering over her to make sure she didn’t choke on her vomit or some shit and those damn feelings bubbled up to the surface again because he would, no matter what, he’d still love her.

 

Caught up in the memory, it’s Sarah who ends up shaking his arm and Sarah who ends up looking at him with the faintest traces of concern as she says, “Art, are you - ”

 

He shakes her off. “I’m fine; I’m not the one with a kid. If you don’t want to - ”

 

“No,” she says, something fierce is her eyes. “It’s not a tragedy yet; we’re gonna find him, yeah?”

 

Art offers Sarah the shadow of a smile. It’s been a tragedy since the moment he met her.

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah is a surprise to him. She’s an excellent bad cop in their interviews. She works hard, putting in her time without complaint. She understands the people they’re investigating in a way Art, who has always worked his ass off to be good and right, does not. She is an asset.

 

And when they find the little boy, whimpering in the corner of a room, it is Sarah who goes to him and scoops him up in her arms and does not let go of his hand until he’s safely back with his family.

 

He gives her a nod of approval, because she deserves it, and he says, “You did good, Childs.”

 

The words seem to freeze the air between them and Art feels caught, somehow, when their gazes meet and Sarah refuses to look away from him, something gentle in the shape of her mouth and the tilt of her head.

 

“Let’s get a beer, yeah?” she finally says, softly. “And you can tell me about my sister.”

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah learned about Beth from the pieces she put together when she was trying to construct her own falsified identity; her picture of Beth is an incomplete puzzle. Nursing a beer, Art tries to fill it all in for her. He tells her about Beth’s brothers, all goofy and overprotective and likely the cause of Beth’s constant need to prove herself tough enough. He tells Sarah about what a great workout partner Beth was, how she’d never let you slow down or give up until you had nothing left to give. He talks about Beth’s stupid pranks at work, about her nervous habit of biting the corner of her mouth that always revealed when she doubted his thoughts on a case, about her love of Christmas and her scorn of Valentine’s Day. He lists her favourite things: winter, Americanos, cats, the colour blue, too-big sweaters that hung over her hands and off her shoulders, laughing at romantic comedies, beating him in games of Fruit Ninja. He paints Beth’s portrait for Sarah over drinks in a corner booth and Sarah smiles and smiles, a soft, nostalgic thing, as she listens.

 

“She sounds amazing,” Sarah says when Art finally runs out of words. “Sounds like a great girl.”

 

“She was,” Art agrees, thinking about all those lovely bits of Beth, all the things he liked best about her, and then he tells Sarah the rest of it.

 

He tells her how Beth slowly started slipping away, how she would lock her computer all the time and snap files closed when he got too close, how she’d forget normal parts of their routine like making fun of him or meeting up at the gym or buying him coffee on the way in on Fridays. He tells her about the drinking, about the pills, about the red rims around Beth’s eyes that never seemed to go away, about the small quaver in her lower lip that hinted at a need to cry. He tells Sarah about how he tried and tried and tried to help Beth, how he would have done anything, how he covered up Maggie Chen’s death, how he held Beth as the tremor in her mouth and chin finally gave way to tears, how he knew she would have done anything for him and he would have done anything for her and, god, if there had been one hint, if he had had one clue, if Beth hadn’t been pretending in front of him all the time -

 

Sarah touches his knee; her eyes look liquid in the dim light of the bar. “Art,” she says. “There was nothing you could have done. You did so much for her and I’m sure she knew it. But she was…” She pauses, struggling for words. “She was losing it. Clinically. And it sounds like you did everything you could.”

 

He shakes his head, feeling too heavy with emotion to speak, and looks down at her hand on his leg. Like Beth, she bites her nails.

 

Art kisses Sarah Manning in the corner of the bar and she lets him. She kisses him back, tugging him closer, gripping the lapels of his blazer. He touches her waist and her hips and her thighs and she feels so, so much like Beth, like the curve of Beth’s waist when he’d slip an arm around her, like Beth’s legs draped across his arm when he carried her to bed. Sarah is everything like Beth and nothing like Beth and now, now that the insanity has ended, Art is beginning to realize the true weight of Beth and Sarah and Sarah and Beth on his psyche.

 

“I’m sorry,” he tells Sarah, his chest in a knot, feeling a mixture of guilt and grief.

 

She touches the corner of her mouth, and she says, in that meaningful way she has, “Me too.”

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes on the weekends they all converge at Felix’s. Alison brings cookies and insists on cleaning the kitchen; Cosima brings Delphine and they smoke joints outside with Felix (Art pretends, respectfully though somewhat grudgingly, not to notice). Helena brings her baby, who captivates all of Kira’s attention and admiration. Rachel comes rarely, but she does come. Sometimes Sarah brings Cal; sometimes Tony Skypes in.

 

Art feels like a hanger-on, hovering in the background, drinking Felix’s whiskey in a quiet corner. Helena will speak to him sometimes with her particular brand of friendliness, Rachel seems to prefer his company to that of the majority of her sister-clones, and Kira will lean against his legs sometimes and tell him about school and giggle until he produces a chocolate bar from his pocket for her, but most of the time, when he goes to these things, he goes alone and stays alone.

 

The women in the room have found a completeness with each other, found a family, essentially adopted Kira and Helena’s girl as children of their own. Together, they feel whole, but Art looks at them all, at Cosima’s hair slowly but surely growing back from her illness, at Alison’s reluctant grins, at Rachel’s cool eyes, Sarah’s bright laughter, Tony’s sarcasm when he appears on Felix’s computer screen - he looks at them and all he can see is the big, gaping hole that Beth left behind.

 

 

 

 

 

One sunny Sunday afternoon, Paul shows up, his eyes travelling around the room apprehensively. Rachel gives him a cool once-over and turns away, Sarah looks at him with a mixture of suspicion and sympathy. Felix mumbles, under his breath, well, if it isn’t big dick Paul. Alison, in typical Alison fashion, shoves her tray of brownies under his nose in a suburban welcome.

 

Paul joins Art in his corner-sitting, whiskey-drinking silence. The dark circles under his eyes match his dark, heavy jacket.

 

Many minutes tick by before he says, “I can’t fucking stand it without her.”

 

When Art turns toward Paul, he feels like he’s moving in slow motion. “You were her monitor.”

 

Paul looks at him, his expression hinting at a mixture of defensiveness and confusion. “Yeah, Art, I was. And her boyfriend.”

 

Art holds his gaze and says, “I was her partner.”

 

 

 

 

 

At work, Sarah hacks into his computer with Raj’s help and signs him up for Match.com.

 

“You’re a catch,” she says when he finds out, attempting seriousness but unable to hide a smirk.

 

“Manning,” Art all but growls. “Delete this right - ”

 

“But you have a match,” she says, pointing. “This girl likes you!”

 

“I don’t need a girlfriend.”

 

“No one said anything about a girlfriend,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.

 

He points to the computer. “No.”

 

Sarah presses her lips together. “Look, mate, you’re not going to...to get over - ” She goes silent at the look on his face and says, more softly, all notes of teasing gone from her voice, “I’m sorry, Art. I’m sorry that she died.”

 

He sinks into her chair, Beth’s old chair. “So am I. Sorry isn’t getting me shit.”

 

 

 

 

 

Art spends a lot of time at the train station, sitting on benches, watching trains and people pass, sometimes pulling out his badge if a potentially illegal situation catches his attention. Sometimes, on Friday or Saturday, he’ll stay there until the station closes, watching the world around his darken slowly. Beth was here once, doing the same thing, probably crying in that quiet way she had, wearing that purple dress that she loved and the heels that she hated.

 

Sarah finds him there one sultry day in the summer, when the air is finally cooling down after the sun has set. She sits down next to him without asking any questions.

 

“I bet she knew, Art, y’know?” she says softly.

 

He doesn’t quite understand, but nonetheless, he says, “You didn’t know Beth.”

 

“No,” she agrees. “I got pretty close with her when I was stealing her identity, but I didn’t know her.”

 

“I knew her,” he says. “I should’ve known. I should’ve seen it coming.”

 

“Beth had a lot going on,” Sarah says softly. “Way more than she knew how to tell anyone. It’s a really scary thing to find out about yourself, and she was trying to help Katja and Beth and Cosima and trying to understand Paul and protect herself and still keep on doing her job. It got to be too much for her. It would’ve been too much for anyone. But she also had you. And I think you kept her going for longer than she would have managed to go by herself. Saving her wasn’t your job, Art. You did absolutely everything you could for her.” She pauses. “You loved her.”

 

Heavily, he says, “I did.”

 

Sarah touches his hand with her own, a hand so much like Beth’s and yet not Beth’s at all. “And I think she knew.”

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah smiles at Art when she comes into work, always later than him. She shakes the snow out of her hair and gives him an easy smile, a wordless greeting. She has a beautiful smile. It breaks through her tough exterior like a sudden ray of sunshine, displaying warmth that only a privileged few get to see. It is a great smile, distinct from the great smile that used to grace the face of the identical girl who once sat at her desk, but great nonetheless. 

 

Art has a deep fondness for her smile, for everything it says to him. He does not (does not, does not) want to kiss her.

 

 

 

 


End file.
